Blocho's comments - page 2

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Coming into 2023, there were only two genres I hadn't done: Westerns and musicals. I thought I could take care of both with a remake of Paint Your Wagon, but the financing fell through, so I settled for this movie. When I was a kid, I loved Westerns. My favorite actors all did Westerns. Guys like John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Bob Mitchum, Chuck Bronson. I have a list with 147 other names. I'm happy to name them all because every one influenced my performance in The Old Way. I especially want to give credit to David Bowie, who never acted in Westerns, but he and I once spent a weekend on mescaline while camping in Nevada near Great Basin, and I thought he helped me learn the true spirit of the West.

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So David calls me up and asks if I can film a short scene with Laura for some show he's doing, and of course I say yes, and he says, "Super duper, Nickster, you're the best." I originally met Dave-o at a gym in Sherman Oaks back in 1984. We were spotting each other on the squat rack one day, and he said he was going to direct a psychosexual thriller that delved into the corruption beneath the surface of American society. He wanted to call it Blue Denim. And I said, "That's a good title, a very American fabric, but maybe you should call it Blue Velvet, like the Bobby Vinton song." He didn't like that idea at all, but later I pointed out how he could improve his squatting form and he got a new personal best on his one rep max. After that, David started agreeing with all of my suggestions.

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I've wanted to play Dracula for years. The job of the actor is to enact mythos, and what better role for doing so than one planted so firmly in centuries of folklore. The vampire offers an embodiment for cascading swirls of fear and strife: guilt, sin, desire, class, garlic. I only wish someone had made a Dracula movie at any point earlier in my career. It could have been anyone. Even a family member. Sure, it was frustrating that no one related to me ever did that, but I just bottled up those feelings to add intensity to my performance here. And intensity to a lot of family gatherings over the past 30 years.

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Before I say anything else, I want to clear up a rumor I've heard a lot. There's a misconception out there that I did this movie because I love prime numbers. That's pure poppycock. I don't care about numbers. I care about animals, and that's why I wanted to be in Primal. People always ask me about my acting method, and I tell them I don't have a method. Instead, I have methods. Some days, I'm using a cobra method and some days it's a seagull method. Tapping into animal spirits has always been central to my acting. I imagine my character as a Liberian mongoose or a nine-banded armadillo, and I think what an armadillo would do in this scene. If I can do that effectively, I bring something raw and feral to my performance. Something primal.

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211 is a prime number, and prime numbers have always been central to my understanding of astral phenomenology. Back when I was first breaking into the industry, Randolph Scott buttonholed me at a post-Oscars party and explained that primes were a boon for moviemaking. That’s why he appeared in Seven Men from Now, which was a kick-ass movie. So I was always looking for a role in a movie with a prime in the title, but I kept getting rejected. I was going to do Seven, but Brad Pitt stole that role from me. Same thing happened with Seven Years in Tibet. What a jerk. So I was stuck doing lame non-prime movies like 8mm and Gone in Sixty Seconds. That's why 211 was my first prime movie, and then I followed it up by starring in Primal a year later. Inarguably, they’re the best movies I’ve ever done.